Is It Time To Close BRNC Dartmouth?

The Royal Navy is on the verge of closing the prestigious naval training college at Dartmouth and merging training with ratings at HMS Raleigh. This would surely mean the end of the RN as we know it and is clearly an outrage. That basically sums up a recent tabloid story, which seemed surprisingly well informed, that suggested that the RN is considering merging training as part of the ongoing Defence Review. Once you get past the initial blood pressure raising ‘OUTRAGE’ that some clearly wanted to feel, its worth looking further at the idea and perhaps asking the question “surely this makes complete sense”?

The MOD is one of the largest landowners in the UK, owning huge swathes of land from remote moorland training estate where live firing can be practised, to the Cape Wrath naval gunnery range off Northern Scotland – where only last week F35 aircraft from HMS PRINCE OF WALES dropped live bombs on Garvie island. It has enormous barrack sites, housing thousands of soldiers and dozens of airfields home to advanced aircraft and equipment. It also manages weapons compounds holding everything from rifle bullets to nuclear warheads, and works from modern offices in Bristol, to nuclear bunkers under Whitehall. The Defence Estate is enormous, complex, and frankly far too big for what the MOD needs.

The first ever ratings passing out parade from BRNC

                                                               UK MOD © Crown copyright

The challenge is that the estate that the MOD has is a legacy of over 100 years of acquiring ever larger tracts of land to fight two world wars, embracing the mass mobilisation of society for war twice in 25 years, and being able to fight on land, sea and air with the supporting industrial and logistical infrastructure to enable this. Much of the land owned and used today by the armed forces is little changed from WW2, and many of the buildings and facilities across the estate are incredibly old, often in very poor condition and in need of expensive maintenance just to keep safe.  At the same time while tracts of land have been sold off, there has arguably been little radical change in the core establishments and training sites used, even when the infrastructure is far larger than is required today.

For example, the Royal Navy has a training footprint that is little changed in terms of real estate from the early 1980s. It operates three main initial training establishments (HMS RALEIGH, BRNC Dartmouth and CTRCRM Lympstone). There are two main training schools (HMS SULTAN and COLLINGWOOD), and a variety of lodger units around the UK for wider training. The Fleet Air Arm operates from two main airfields and has access to two supporting airfields (RNAS Culdrose, Predannack, Yeovilton and Merryfields) as well as a forward operating unit at Prestwick. The Royal Marines operate from Plymouth, Instow, Chivenor, Taunton and Arbroath, while there are still three main naval bases in the UK (Portsmouth, Plymouth and Faslane) as well as ongoing use made of Portland and Rosyth.

This laydown has remained remarkably static for decades and little changed in terms of occupancy, even if the actual military units have rapidly declined in number. At the same time very few sites have actually closed – the authors best estimate for naval establishments that have genuinely closed since 1980 is HMS DRYAD, MERCURY, FISGARD, PEMBROKE, DAUNTLESS – all of which were either Part 1 or Part 2 training sites. Both DRYAD and MERCURY were subsumed into HMS COLLINGWOOD, while FISGARD, PEMBROKE and DAUNTLESS all carry out their work at HMS RALEIGH. The only air stations to have closed are OSPREY and DAEDEALUS, while other than Chatham, all major UK naval bases continue to see some form of UK military use. In other words, the RN still has the infrastructure and estate of a navy of the 1980s, when it was twice the size it is today and had nearly triple the ships and aircraft, but without any additional money to cover the costs of this estate.

Nowhere is this more notable than the Part 1 training estate. For decades the Royal Navy has operated a physical split between Officers and Ratings training sites, seeing the two as utterly different beasts. All junior ratings are trained at HMS RALEIGH, in Torpoint, Devon, where they undergo a demanding training regime designed to turn them into junior sailors. RALEIGH is a large site, which also houses a number of lodger units, and is one of the most significant training sites in the UK. It has rifle ranges, assault courses, NBCD training, RAS training and other facilities which means that practically every member of the RN will need to go on course at RALEIGH at some point in their career.

BRNC Dartmouth has a long history as the home of Officer training for the Royal Navy. A purpose-built site, it dominates the glorious River Dart, and its timeless buildings provide a genuinely stunning spectacle to tourists. The College has evolved significantly over the last century, moving from being a “public school with a very overactive CCF” and recruiting 13-year-olds for their academic education and training them to be naval officers, to then delivering multi-year professional training to school leavers. Even in the 1980s there would be a two-year journey for many Officers from the point of passing through the gates to passing out, including sea time, exams and other challenges. At this stage the College could be seen as more like a 6^th form or university, providing academic lectures and military training.  Today the College provides significantly shorter training (around 30 weeks) and previous terms of sea time, or blocks like the 6-week Initial Sea Training time have been replaced by a 3 week ship acquaint. There is very little time at sea during a cadet’s period at the College anymore.

UK MOD © Crown copyright

Throughout its history one thing that defined the RN training approach was that Officers and Ratings should not mix on initial training. Its hard to tell where this stems from, but the general ethos was that Officers should be allowed to make their mistakes early in their career away from the prying eyes of junior ratings under training, which in turn perhaps owes much to the class system that permeated the Royal Navy until the end of the 1980s. There was very much an atmosphere that Officers were ‘Gentlemen’ and Ratings were poorly educated working class, with the two worlds having very little in common. In addition, the speed of the training for ratings (6 weeks back in that period) versus the two years for Officers meant that at this stage of their careers, there was little in common.

Today one of the most pleasant changes to the Royal Navy is the near total collapse of the class system. Well over a third of the Officer Corps is commissioned from the ranks, a number that is only likely to grow in coming years. At the same time the academic skills and background of both Officer and Rating cadres is increasing, with many ratings now joining with degrees, and often being far more technically qualified than officers onboard. Finally, there are far fewer boundaries between the different groups of Officers, NCO’s and Ratings compared to previous years, and at times it is hard to tell them apart. The RN is far more socially meritocratic than it has been in the past. What this means is that the case for BRNC as an isolated warrior monastery for the ‘Young Gentlemen’ away from the common sailor to learn their craft has vanished, and good riddance to it.

Given this, why then does the RN need to maintain two separate initial naval training establishments? The argument usually goes that its about “tradition” and that somehow the Navy is doomed if its officers don’t go to Dartmouth. There is no doubt that the corridors of BRNC resonate with history – to walk (or slip/slide) down the main corridor or across the Quarterdeck is to march in the footsteps of legends. To see the corridors full of faded photos of former classes, tracing out the youthful faces of now elderly Admirals, or to see the artwork which speaks of gallant leadership and great battles is to feel part of something much older and greater. BRNC excels at wrapping up the new aspiring Officer and gently reminding them that they are the latest iteration of people to enter an establishment that has trained tens of thousands of people for an organisation that in one form or another has played a central role in defending these islands for over a millennia. To go to Dartmouth is to be reminded of the old and ancient role played by the Royal Navy in defending this island nation from harm. This is a strong argument – the ethos and spirit of the RN Officer Corps is made at BRNC where they learn their craft in the same location as countless of their forbears, and are better for it.

The challenge though is that, to put it politely, BRNC is also not in top condition. Like many buildings across the Defence Estate, it will have acquired a range of maintenance issues, legacy challenges and designs that don’t make it ideal for 21^st century training requirements. At its heart BRNC is essentially a small suite of increasingly dated classrooms, a nice Chapel, some feeding arrangements and a lot of particularly pokey bedrooms intended for Edwardian schoolboys surrounded by some nice playing fields and a good marina. Is this really the right physical infrastructure set up to train officer cadets in their craft, or could it be done differently?

HMS RALEIGH UK MOD © Crown copyright

If you look at the training needs of a modern officer, its hard to point to any activity that occurs at BRNC uniquely that cannot or is not already done off site. The author’s understanding is that there is significant use made of other RN sites like HMS RALEIGH to conduct core training, which incurs a time and cost issue transporting cadets around the country to get to their training. BRNC does not, arguably, deliver anything training wise that is unique that cannot be as easily or better provided elsewhere.  The key advantage that BRNC brings is ‘soft power’ in that many foreign nations send their young officers to be trained at Dartmouth due to its prior history, heritage and the site – if you lose that, would you in turn reduce defence diplomacy and soft power?

Given this, would it make sense to think about fusing training on a single site like HMS RALEIGH? There are strong arguments in favour of this course of action. It would create a maritime training centre of excellence in Plymouth, which would help strengthen the case for the wider naval base amid a shrinking naval force. By collocating all core training in one site, it would be possible to invest in modern facilities and accommodation that could work year-round, while saving considerably on training costs by having all the facilities needed on one site.

There will be opposition to this from those who feel that Officers and Ratings should be trained apart. Frankly the authors view is that this is outdated and doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. From very early in their naval careers, junior officers will be exposed to sailors as part of their initial sea training or professional training. They will be seen at an early time by junior sailors, and their mistakes will be spotted – but this does not undermine them. The idea that an AB will remember years later a YO’s mistake and then realise that this person is their new Divisional Officer or CO and query their suitability seems farfetched. The RN rightly promotes on merit, so any Officer who has progressed that far would have matured considerably as both a leader and manager. The sense that training cannot be combined to spare the blushes of the Officers and Ratings seems overly sentimental nonsense that harks back to an era when YO’s spent almost two years at BRNC. This should not stand in the way of looking at merging the two sites.

There would be two main challenges to such a move. The first is defining how to protect the ethos of BRNC on a new site – can the College continue if it is suddenly a lodger unit at HMS RALEIGH, occupying buildings on site alongside new entry ratings? The authors view is yes it can, as cultures can be built and evolve over time – with sufficient lead in time and preparation any move would be seamless and within a year or two people would quickly feel that the new college was timeless as the old college – look for instance at the way that the Joint Services Command and Staff College has rapidly become accepted as a very good thing by all who use it.

Senior Gunroom - UK MOD © Crown copyright

The real challenge then is money. Or rather the lack of money to spend on a new site and carry out a new build in this way. To close or repurpose BRNC would cost a significant amount of money – it is likely that the cost of remediating legacy building safety issues, and ensuring that a site used for military training meets standards for civilian residential use would be extremely expensive. Similarly, once the decision is made to cease training, all investment is likely to cease – but if the move was delayed, then you have the worst of both worlds – a decaying estate without money to run it on, while the replacement gets ever less affordable and further delayed. Just look at the case of RAF Halton, which is by all accounts in increasingly poor material state, and has been awaiting closure for over a decade, despite the replacement not yet being built.

The morale impact on the individual of joining the military, entering a prestigious site like BRNC and then realising it is, to put it mildly, falling apart, would probably be deeply off putting to many new entrants, and hardly likely to benefit defence diplomacy. This may sound a minor thing, but if you think you’re joining a modern armed force, operating advanced technology and kit and then find yourself in  a decrepit 1900s era single room with insufficient charging points, 1950s furniture and plumbed with a sink for a male only ‘hot and cold ensuite’ then it’s not sending a positive message to recruits.

The wider money problem is where does the money come from for the RN to invest in the new facility? The cost of building a bespoke training site from scratch and delivering it will be enormous, and represents money that doesn’t exist. But if you can’t spend money on the new site, you’re tied into spending money on the old site, which is increasingly old, is a grade 1 listed building and which has very significant constraints on how it is operated. Either way you need to spend money, and lots of it. A good analogy is the ongoing debate around refurbishing the Houses of Parliament in the UK – the cost to do a full refurbishment will be eye wateringly vast, and politically contentious. But if it doesn’t happen, then huge amounts of building work needs to be done just to keep it at a legally safe minimum standard. The challenge with Victorian era buildings now is that you can’t afford to update them, you can’t afford to keep them repaired and you can’t politically or practically get rid of them – so what do you do?  The MOD faces a similar challenge. Any attempt to close BRNC or repurpose it would be extremely unpopular and cause outcries from various quarters. But if it doesn’t close the site, it will need to spend a lot of money to keep it open – which is also likely to be unpopular.

There will be many who will take the view that BRNC must not close, and that RALEIGH must remain open. This is an entirely legitimate view, but a return challenge would be ‘how do you plan to pay for that’? The harsh reality is that the RN has a shore footprint vastly in excess of what it will ever realistically need again, and that this is costing money and diverting resources away from the front line. Peoples usual answer at times like this is the vague ‘smash bureaucracy, get rid of Civil Servants’ etc, but the irony is that if they want fewer civil servants, then they should support site closures. One of the reasons that the MOD Civil Service is the size that it is, is in part because each site needs admin support staff, guards, people to carry out all the various stores roles etc. All these civilians are civil servants / contractors, so the more sites closed, the smaller the MOD Civil Service can become.

Sandquay marina UK MOD © Crown copyright 

The counter argument of course is that RALEIGH closes and all training moves to BRNC. Such a move would be potentially very helpful as it would unlock the RALEIGH site for a move for the Royal Marines (there have long been public rumours that it would be an excellent site to collocate large parts of the Royal Marines including Lympstone and some units). But this would also require considerable investment in BRNC to provide additional accommodation, hotel services and modernised training capacity, which may be challenging in a Grade 1 listed building. That said, during Covid, several cohorts of junior ratings were trained at BRNC, so there is precedent here for considering this – although it would be a very significant, and expensive change requiring funding far in excess of what exists.

The real issue here is that every pound spent on the UK defence estate is a pound less to be spent on the front line. There is no doubt that large parts of the estate are utterly critical to national security and must be maintained at all costs, but with hundreds of sites, and literally tens of thousands of buildings under its charge, the MOD faces a huge challenge. Every site closed represents more money to spend on other sites, reduced staffing requirements and modernised facilities in newer locations. But every site closed also causes job losses and will rip the heart out of often isolated poor communities. For example, RNAS Culdrose in Cornwall is the single biggest employer in the entire county, which is already economically deprived. Were it to close, the economic damage would be felt for many years to come across the Southwest. This is the challenge the MOD has – it is both responsible for getting value for money in its spending to keep the nation safe, while also recognising its responsibility to wider government to avoid taking decisions that actively harm or hinder wider government policies.

The result is that the RN faces a really challenging set of decisions. To close the estate down, offload it and then carry out a long term rebuild to provide a smaller but modernised defence estate that meets its need, will last years and cost billions. But to keep the estate going as it is now will also cost billions just to stand still. In both cases, the pressure will be to free up spending on the estate to fund the front line, but how do you strike the balance correctly? The RN can’t afford to stay where it is, but it can’t afford to move house either – so what does it do?

Another money related problem is one that is common to much of the estate – how much would the MOD get from closing the site completely? Across the UK there are a myriad of sites that remain open because due to restrictive covenants that would require almost total rebuilding / demolition / decontamination, it would cost more to close them than to keep them open. In many ways these are ‘zombie sites’ – the MOD doesn’t want or need them, but it can’t afford to close them, so they must remain while other locations close. In the case of BRNC there are likely to be all manner of issues around closure that would make site disposal nearly impossible, and which suggests that its future must remain in some form of government service.

UK MOD © Crown copyright

If we want ships and sailors at sea, we need to accept that the time has come for fewer shore sites. If we want modern world class capabilities like SSNs and carriers, we need to accept that investment is required to support them properly, but this can only be done in a few places. If we want to keep highly trained and expensive sailors in the Service, we need to do more on the quality of accommodation and living arrangements – but this means drawing down other sites to afford new builds. To ensure that there is a modern navy with supporting infrastructure fit for the mid 21^st century means closing the arrangements of the 19^th and 20^th centuries – even if they do reflect ‘tradition’. Perhaps we should remember that tradition is peer pressure from dead people and decide based on our future needs and successors may think, not what our long departed predecessors will say from beyond the grave.

Perhaps the solution for BRNC is to keep the site in Government use, but focus naval training at RALEIGH. As an academic venue, it would excel as a conference centre and location for training in general. Perhaps keep lodger units like the RN Leadership Academy on site to train officers in their leadership careers, but tie this up with wider Government to bring the funding into renovate the building to meet modern standards. Maybe the time has come to re-establish the Civil Service College, formerly at Sunningdale, and move it to Dartmouth, to provide a home for all Civil Service staff training? The name “Britannia Royal Civil Service College” has a certain ring to it after all…